British Transport Police is expanding its trial of live facial recognition (LFR) to the London Underground, despite concerns about privacy and mistaken identification. The force, which polices railways across England, Scotland, and Wales, will begin its Tube deployments at Victoria Underground station. The cameras will then rotate between Underground and Network Rail stations until the trial ends in November. The trial began at London Bridge railway station in February and is intended to assess how the technology performs in a railway setting. It follows deployments by the Metropolitan Police, which says it will start using face-scanning cameras in London's West End and Soho by the end of this year after a six-month pilot in the south London borough of Croydon. Live facial recognition scans faces within a camera's field of view and compares them with a police watchlist. A possible match generates an alert that an officer must review before deciding whether further action is warranted. According to the railway bobbies, the technology deployed relies on the NEC NeoFace M40 algorithm, which appears to be the same across several forces. "Expanding deployments into London Underground stations will help us assess the technology in a different transport environment while continuing to refine how it is used across the railway network," said the officer responsible for the project, chief superintendent Chris Casey. Critics describe the technology as dystopian and intrusive, and errors have already resulted in innocent people being mistaken for criminals and detained. Members of ethnic minorities appear to be more at risk of being mistaken for someone else by facial algorithms. "This is a disturbing and dystopian expansion of live facial recognition that will capture millions of innocent people's faces. Far from reserving this for exceptional cases, British police are now using live facial recognition routinely in the sort of pervasive way you might expect in China, but not in a democracy," says Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch. The London Underground network is estimated to handle more than 3.7 million passenger journeys a day on weekdays. A recent Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, commissioned by facial recognition biz Face Int, found that 69 percent believed the public should have a say in how the technology is used. It also found that 61 percent worried errors could get people into trouble for things they had not done, while 57 percent were concerned about how facial images were stored. Britain's railway fuzz says images of anyone who does not match the authorized watchlist are deleted immediately and permanently. Whether that remains the policy in future is another matter, of course. We asked the British Transport Police to comment regarding public concerns about the use of facial recognition technology. A spokesperson for the force referred to us to the comments made in the announcement by chief superintendent Casey, who said: "Our focus remains on protecting the public, preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice, while ensuring the technology is used lawfully, proportionately and transparently." ®
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